Having recently rebranded its BFR to the more benignly named Starship, SpaceX has now added the finishing touches to the first prototype of this super heavy-lift vehicle. The rocket will be used for sub-orbital testing sometime this year, marking important baby steps in its plans for the Moon, Mars and maybe beyond.

When the Falcon Heavy rocket SpaceX fired into orbit last year with a Tesla in tow it was a huge moment for space exploration. But even though it's the most powerful rocket in operation today, it is still not big or powerful enough for manned missions to Mars.

The Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), on the other hand, is designed to carry dozens of people into deep space and back, along with all the cargo that might be needed for such a mission's success. Now known as Starship, the company has been busy assembling the various components of the first prototype, which can now be seen in full standing upright at its Texas launch site.

The shimmering, stainless steel Starship looks equal parts retro and futuristic, and will remain shiny and silver because the company says the skin will get too hot for paint. This prototype is intended only for sub-orbital hopper tests, similar to the Falcon 9, where the company will practice launching and landing it within the confines Earth's atmosphere.

SpaceX expects to make a few changes for the orbital version. It will have thicker skin to prevent wrinkles and a smoother, curvier nose section. That orbital version is expected to be complete around June, CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet on Thursday. The sub-orbital prototype, meanwhile, is expected to take flight for the first time in the coming months.

"I will do a full technical presentation of Starship after the test vehicle we're building in Texas flies, so hopefully March/April," Musk tweeted last month.

Picture a group of adventurous companions setting out into the great frontier to explore a barren, wild land. They must bring only the most important things they’ll need to survive on their own. Every ounce of weight they decide to take with them means another ounce they must transport. It sounds like an extreme backpacking trip, but I’m actually talking about a future mission to the surface of Mars.

We take for granted all the things we have on Earth that support human life—air for breathing, water for drinking and nutrients in the soil that allow us to grow food. On Mars, however, astronauts will need to bring their own life support systems, which can be prohibitively costly to transport. Without a lightweight flexible technology that can manufacture a variety of products using limited resources, the first Mars explorers won’t survive their journey.

Typically, microbes are considered a threat to space missions because they could cause illnesses. But non-pathogenic microbes might in fact be part of the solution for getting to Mars. Microbes can convert a wide variety of raw materials into a large number of essential products. Using engineering principles, synthetic biology can be harnessed to turn microbes into tiny programmable factories.

I began to study yeast as way to make chemicals when I joined the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at Clemson University in 2012. My research group works with a type of yeast called Yarrowia lipolytica, which efficiently makes fatty acids in the form of trigylcerides from a wide variety of low-value waste streams. Using genetic engineering, it is possible to add genes from other organisms to enable production of derivatives of fatty acids, such as biofuels, precursors for adhesives and nutraceuticals.

My students and I began to think about where wastes were abundantly available; where their storage posed a significant problem; and where yeast-derived products would be in short supply. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that human waste is both problematic and unavoidable: it generates more than half of the waste on a typical mission. This includes, most obviously, urine and feces. But it also includes carbon dioxide and water from crew respiration, perspiration and hygiene; food waste, packaging waste and even dead skin cells. It sounds pretty gross, but we wondered if we could engineer Yarrowia lipolytica to make mission-critical fatty-acid–derived products from these materials?

We used synthetic biology to “cut and paste” genes from algae and plants into our yeast. This enabled them to make omega-3 fatty acids like eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), a bioactive component of fish oil that has been shown to prevent bone density loss in astronauts. In a separate strain, we inserted a gene from bacteria that convert fatty acids into polyesters called polyhydroxyalkonates (PHAs). By engineering the fatty acid metabolism pathway, we can tune the properties of the individual PHA units so we can make plastics with properties matched to their application. This may be important for a Mars mission as a way to make the polymers needed for 3-D printing parts or tools that break or are lost.

Microbes need to eat, and our next challenge was how to feed them. As a source of carbon, we chose carbon dioxide, produced by crew members at a rate of over one kilogram per day. Carbon dioxide is also abundantly available on Mars, comprising over 97 percent of the atmosphere. Since our yeast does not directly consume carbon dioxide, we use a fast-growing cyanobacteria that converts the carbon dioxide into sugars and cell biomass for our yeast.

The other major element needed for growing yeast is nitrogen, which is available in the form of urea in human urine. In a recent publication in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology we reported the efficient use of the urea by Yarrowia lipolytica. That’s no surprise: this yeast has genes that are similar to those in microbes that colonize the human urinary tract and eat urea.

While microbes are not the only solution, they should continue to be developed for a future Mars mission. As we get better at designing microbes to make specific products, meeting the needs of Mars-bound pioneers may become as easy as backpacking here on Earth, but we still have many miles to go.

That's the goal Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone set for themselves when they founded Los Angeles-based Relativity Space in 2015.

At the time they were working from a WeWork in Seattle, during the darkest winter in Seattle history, where Ellis was wrapping up a stint at Blue Origin . The two had met in college at USC in their jet propulsion lab. Noone had gone on to take a job at SpaceX and Ellis at Blue Origin, but the two remained in touch and had an idea for building rockets quickly and cheaply — with the vision that they wanted to eventually build these rockets on Mars.

Now, more than $35 million dollars later, the company has been awarded a multi-year contract to build and operate its own rocket launch facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

That contract, awarded by The 45th Space Wing of the Air Force, is the first direct agreement the U.S. Air Force has completed with a venture-backed orbital launch company that wasn't also being subsidized by billionaire owner-operators.

By comparison, Relativity's neighbors at Cape Canaveral are Blue Origin (which Jeff Bezos has been financing by reportedly selling $1 billion in shares of Amazon stock since 2017); SpaceX (which has raised roughly $2.5 billion since its founding and initial capitalization by Elon Musk); and United Launch Alliance, the joint venture between the defense contracting giants Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense.

Like the other launch sites at Cape Canaveral, Launch Complex 16, where Relativity expects to be launching its first rockets by 2020, has a storied history in the U.S. space and missile defense program. It was used for Titan missile launches, the Apollo and Gemini programs and Pershing missile launches.

From the site, Relativity will be able to launch its first designed rocket, the Terran 1, which is the only fully 3D-printed rocket in the world.

That rocket can carry a maximum payload of 1,250 kilograms to a low earth orbit of 185 kilometers above the Earth. Its nominal payload is 900 kilograms of a Sun-synchronous orbit 500 kilometers out, and it has a 700 kilogram high-altitude payload capacity to 1,200 kilometers in Sun-synchronous orbit. Relativity prices its dedicated missions at $10 million, and $11,000 per kilogram to achieve Sun-synchronous orbit.

If the company's two founders are right, then all of this launch work Relativity is doing is just a prelude to what the company considers to be its real mission — the advancement of manufacturing rockets quickly and at scale as a test run for building out manufacturing capacity on Mars.

"Rockets are the business model now," Ellis told me last year at the company's offices at the time, a few hundred feet from SpaceX. "That's why we created the printing tech. Rockets are the largest, lightest-weight, highest-cost item that you can make."

It's also a way for the company to prove out its technology. "It benefits the long-term mission," Ellis continued. "Our vision is to create the intelligent automated factory on Mars… We want to help them to iterate and scale the society there."

Ellis and Noone make some pretty remarkable claims about the proprietary 3D printer they've built and housed in their Inglewood offices. Called "Stargate," the printer is the largest of its kind in the world and aims to go from raw materials to a flight-ready vehicle in just 60 days. The company claims that the speed with which it can manufacture new rockets should pare down launch timelines by somewhere between two and four years.

Another factor accelerating Relativity's race to market is a long-term contract the company signed last year with NASA for access to testing facilities at the agency's Stennis Space Center on the Mississippi-Louisiana border. It's there, deep in the Mississippi delta swampland, that Relativity plans to develop and quality control as many as 36 complete rockets per year on its 25-acre space.

All of this activity helps the company in another segment of its business: licensing and selling the manufacturing technology it has developed.

"The 3D factory and automation is the other product, but really that's a change in emphasis," says Ellis. "It's always been the case that we're developing our own metal 3D printing technology. Not only can we make rockets. If the long-term mission is 3D printing on Mars, we should think of the factory as its own product tool."

Not everyone agrees. At least one investor I talked to said that in many cases, the cost of 3D printing certain basic parts outweighs the benefits that printing provides.

Still, Relativity is undaunted.

But first, the company — and its competitors at Blue Origin, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and the hundreds of other companies working on launching rockets into space again — need to get there. For Relativity, the Canaveral deal is one giant step for the company, and one great leap toward its ultimate goal.

"This is a giant step toward being a launch company," says Ellis. "And it's aligned with the long-term vision of one day printing on Mars."

When considering cat health, environment is a key factor too. Studies show that both environment and diet play a big role in the cat obesity and Diabetes epidemic.

With this in mind, it would be somewhat hypocritical for a meat-feeding cat owner to argue that a plant-based feeding cat owner was forcing the cat to do something unnatural. Indeed, both could be accused of that.

This review of the literature shows that with careful management it is possible to have a healthy cat on a plant-based diet.

Regardless, there is no country-wide epidemic of vegan cats being rushed into vets with nutritional deficiencies.

Take Evolution foods, for example: They have been selling vegan cat food for 28 years and haven't had one recall. And judging by their reviews, there's a ton of cats doing very well on their food.

By design, a plant-based diet is not what nature intended for cats. But as discussed, the same argument can be put forth for the standard meat-based cat diet, albeit one could effectively argue it is easier to meet the nutritional requirements of a cat using the latter.

What's clear is that a cat's nutritional needs can be met through plant-based, mineral and synthetic-based ingredients, but close attention should be paid to the nutritional adequacy of the food source, and owners should adhere to regular vet checkups – as advised for all pets – to ensure optimal health.

Simply put: “cat ownership” can be detrimental to a cat's health.

The quality and type of meat, the dairy and processed snacks, the living environment, the level of exercise. All these things have the potential to be harmful to a cat's health.

To single out owners who put cats on a plant-based diet as cruel people is the pot calling the kettle black.

Millions of owners harm their cats on a daily basis by unknowingly feeding them low-quality meat, and in some cases by knowingly feeding cats dairy products and snacks high in processed carbohydrates.

The meat we feed our cats also contains synthetic substances such as growth hormones and antibiotics.

Moreover, many cat owners restrict exercise by keeping cats in doors so they can enjoy companionship, and attempt to reverse natural hunting instincts such as killing birds and rodents.

The reality is: a nutritionally balanced plant-based diet, along with the necessary access to exercise and territory to roam is likely to be healthier than a low-quality canned-meat and milk diet coupled with a sedentary lifestyle.

So the answer to the question “Can cats be vegan?” is… it's possible, yes.

Xiaomi has proven to be an extremely versatile company, which is capable of creating all kinds of smart devices, ranging from smartphones to accessories, home products, or even their own clothing line. It has been a brand that has been present in almost any market that can come to mind, but what would you think if we told you that the Chinese company is working on a house to live on Mars? That’s right, a house that serves to survive the surface of our sister planet Mars, which has only managed to send a successful explorer robot.

Xiaomi’s future plans on their Mars houseThis shows that Xiaomi has a series of plans much larger than simply technology products, it is also looking to help develop the space age properly with their contributions, this is because China is a great power and also has the desire to contribute to the space race, due to that, Xiaomi has not been limited only to what they can create for the earth, but has decided to travel further. This project has been developed by the headquarters in Beijing and has been given the name of MARS Case, it is a house with a minimalist design that can withstand unexplored environments, has the ability to reuse heat, water, among other resources.

Physically it is a house created from several inflatable modules with sizes of 2.4×2.4×2 meters, this means that it can literally be deflated to be carried from one place to another. One of the modules included is of electrical appliances, so it is very well equipped for all types of needs. This module is called The Home, however, it was not only developed by Xiaomi, since a company called OPEN Architecture helped a lot with the design.

Trump reportedly offered NASA ‘all the money you could ever need’ to land on Mars during his presidency

David Choi – jan 23, 2019

Foto: Susan Walsh/AP President Donald Trump, flanked by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, left, and his daughter Ivanka Trump, gives a thumbs up following a video conference with the International Space Station,, April 24, 2017, from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.

President Donald Trump reportedly once offered NASA “all the money you could ever need” to land on Mars during the first term of his presidency, according to a report from New York magazine that cited a coming memoir by the former White House communications official Cliff Sims.

The magazine said Trump asked a NASA official: “What if we sent NASA’s budget through the roof, but focused entirely on that instead of whatever else you’re doing now. Could it work then?” The answer was apparently “no.”

President Donald Trump once offered NASA “all the money you could ever need” to land on Mars during the first term of his presidency, according to a New York magazine report citing a coming memoir from a former White House communications official.

According to the magazine, in “Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House”, the former White House director of message strategy Cliff Sims recalled that immediately before a phone call with astronauts aboard the International Space Station in April 2017, Trump expressed a deep fascination with sending humans to Mars during his first term.In the private dining room with NASA officials, Trump reportedly queried his audience on the possibility of landing on Mars. Robert Lightfoot Jr., then the acting NASA administrator, said the US was aiming to land a human on Mars by 2030.

“But is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?” the magazine said Trump asked, citing Sims.

Foto: Cliff Sims, then the director of White House message strategy, with the White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer, then the White House press secretary, on June 12, 2017.sourcePablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Sims reportedly wrote that he was “getting antsy” in the room because of Trump’s abrupt question shortly before a televised phone call with the space station. NASA officials were believed to have gone to great lengths to coordinate with the space station, with timing considered particularly important.

“All I could think about was that we had to be on camera in three minutes … And yet we’re in here casually chatting about shaving a full decade off NASA’s timetable for sending a manned flight to Mars,” Sims reportedly wrote. “And seemingly out of nowhere.”

Trump then reportedly asked Lightfoot: “But what if I gave you all the money you could ever need to do it?”

“What if we sent NASA’s budget through the roof, but focused entirely on that instead of whatever else you’re doing now. Could it work then?” Trump reportedly asked.

Lightfoot reiterated the logistical hurdles to Trump, who appeared to be “visibly disappointed,” the magazine said, citing Sims.

With seconds to spare, the report said, Trump went into a bathroom to check his appearance, looked in the mirror and said, “Space Station, this is your president.”

Trump went on to ask the astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was aboard the International Space Station, about Mars.

“What do you see a timing for actually sending humans to Mars?” Trump asked Whitson during the call.

After Whitson pointed out the technological and legislative challenges such an effort would entail, Trump appeared to joke that he wanted to complete the space mission “in my first term, or at worst in my second term.”

“So I think we’ll have to speed that up a little bit,” Trump said.

One month before the phone call, Trump signed a $19.5 billion bill to fund NASA. The authorization bill required NASA to commit to exploring Mars and was reportedly the first of its kind in seven years.

Sims, who worked on Trump’s presidential campaign, now leads a boutique consulting firm. “Team of Vipers” was ranked No. 7 on Amazon’s best-seller list at the time of this writing. It is scheduled for release on January 29.

A Goldstone 111.5-foot (34-meter) beam-waveguide antenna tracks a spacecraft as it comes into view. The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex is located in the Mojave Desert in California. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will use antennas like this one to transmit a new set of commands to the Opportunity rover in an attempt to compel the 15-year-old Martian explorer to contact Earth.Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have begun transmitting a new set of commands to the Opportunity rover in an attempt to compel the 15-year-old Martian explorer to contact Earth. The new commands, which will be beamed to the rover during the next several weeks, address low-likelihood events that could have occurred aboard Opportunity, preventing it from transmitting.

The rover's last communication with Earth was received June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover's location on Mars.

"We have and will continue to use multiple techniques in our attempts to contact the rover," said John Callas, project manager for Opportunity at JPL. "These new command strategies are in addition to the 'sweep and beep' commands we have been transmitting up to the rover since September." With "sweep and beep," instead of just listening for Opportunity, the project sends commands to the rover to respond back with a beep.

The new transmission strategies are expected to go on for several weeks. They address three possible scenarios: that the rover's primary X-band radio - which Opportunity uses to communicate with Earth - has failed; that both its primary and secondary X-band radios have failed; or that the rover's internal clock, which provides a timeframe for its computer brain, is offset. A series of unlikely events would need to have transpired for any one of these faults to occur. The potential remedies being beamed up to address these unlikely events include a command for the rover to switch to its backup X-band radio and commands directed to reset the clock and respond via UHF.

"Over the past seven months we have attempted to contact Opportunity over 600 times," said Callas. "While we have not heard back from the rover and the probability that we ever will is decreasing each day, we plan to continue to pursue every logical solution that could put us back in touch."

Time is of the essence for the Opportunity team. The "dust-clearing season" - the time of year on Mars when increased winds could clear the rover's solar panels of dust that might be preventing it from charging its batteries - is drawing to a close. Meanwhile, Mars is heading into southern winter, which brings with it extremely low temperatures that are likely to cause irreparable harm to an unpowered rover's batteries, internal wiring and/or computer systems.

If either these additional transmission strategies or "sweep and beep" generates a response from the rover, engineers could attempt a recovery. If Opportunity does not respond, the project team would again consult with the Mars Program Office at JPL and NASA Headquarters to determine the path forward.

For more information about Opportunity and the Mars Exploration Rover program, visit:

It’s Official. Humans Are Going to Mars. NASA Has Unveiled Their Mission.

On December 23, 2018

Humanity has been fascinated by Mars since long before we stepped foot on the Moon. Our planetary neighbor has been the subject of innumerable works of sci-fi and inspired countless dreams of adventure and exploration. Now, after decades of determination, research, and scientific breakthroughs, we’re finally ready to do it: humans are going to Mars. Really.

Last year President Trump issued a mandate for NASA: get people to Mars by 2033. One week later, NASA responded with its most detailed plan to date for reaching the Red Planet, and it details five phases along the road to Mars.

We’re in Phase 0 now, conducting tests at the International Space Station (ISS) and developing partnerships with private space companies. Phase I will span 2018 to 2025 and will include the launch and testing of six SLS rockets. Those rockets will deliver components of the Deep Space Gateway (DSG), a new space station to be built near the Moon to serve astronauts en route to Mars.

After that, Phase II will launch the Deep Space Transport (DST) tube toward the lunar station in 2027, and in 2028 or 2029, astronauts will inhabit the tube for more than 400 days.

In 2030, Phase III will see the DST restocked with supplies and the Mars crew via SLS rocket. Phase IV, of course, will be the trip itself in 2033. That means we’re just a scant 16 years away from reaching a goal that has eluded every generation that came before us.

Completing the mission within their budget will be a challenge for NASA. That budget is currently about .5 percent of the total U.S. budget. For comparison, it was more than four percent during the Apollo Moon missions.

The mission to Mars includes obstacles beyond budget — keeping astronauts healthy and reasonably happy on the journey is chief among them. Without stopovers between Earth and Mars, astronauts will need to port everything they need with them, including air, food, and water, for a round-trip duration of two or three years.

Mental health is likely to be a concern for Mars astronauts, too, as they will essentially be sealed into the space tube for years at a time, with no ability for an emergency return once they leave Cislunar space. NASA’s HI-SEAS isolation experiment has shown promising results, but it is likely that the journey won’t be possible for everyone.

NASA also has competition in the race to get to Mars. Both Boeing and SpaceX hope to get there first, with SpaceX setting the lofty goal of arriving in 2022.

Ultimately, though, we all benefit from the friendly competition in the race toward Mars and the creative solutions it will almost certainly generate. If private companies work out some of these human challenges before NASA can, the agency can build on their experiences and spend its budget and efforts on other problems. In the end, the goal of putting humans on Mars will have been reached, irrespective of which organization crosses the finish line first.

The company that aimed to put humanity on the red planet has met an unfortunate, but wholly-expected end. Mars One Ventures, the for-profit arm of the Mars One mission was declared bankrupt back in January, but wasn't reported until a keen-eyed Redditor found the listing. It was the brainchild of Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, previously the founder of green energy company Ampyx Power. Lansdorp's aim was to start a company that could colonize one of our nearest neighbors.

Mars One was split into two ventures, the non-profit Mars One Foundation and the for-profit Mars One Ventures. The Swiss-based Ventures AG was declared bankrupt by a Basel court on January 15th and was, at the time, valued at almost $100 million. Mars One Ventures PLC, the UK-registered branch, is listed as a dormant company with less than £20,000 in its accounts.

There is no data available on the non-profit Mars One Foundation, which funded itself by charging its commercial partner licensing fees. Speaking to Engadget, Bas Lansdorp said that the Foundation is still operating, but won't be able to act without further investment. Lansdorp declined to give further comment beyond saying that he was working with other parties "to find a solution."

Rather than governments or philanthropy, Lansdorp believed that TV would provide funds necessary to bankroll the launches. Mars One would be the backdrop to the world's most expensive reality show as Earthbound viewers watched the colonization process. As part of the angle, Mars One recruited its potential colonists from a pool of volunteers and made documentaries about them. These shows were then sold on to willing buyers and broadcasters that bought into the hype.

The last announcement made by Mars One was in July 2018, when it boasted of an investment deal with Phoenix Enterprises. Phoenix pledged to fund the company with up to €12 million across the year, which at the time was worth around $14 million. This money would be used to pay the Mars One Foundation its licensing fees, re-list Mars One Ventures on the Frankfurt stock exchange and continue colonist selection. That, apparently, involved, bringing "candidates together in a desert location to test their team skills."

Mars One's overambitious goals were seen as questionable, given the economics of reality TV compared to the cost of a rocket launch. Researchers at MIT took issue with many of the project's claims, suggesting that Lansdorp's plan would quickly kill all of the colonists. It's a point that Lansdorp refuted in an interview on this website back in 2015.